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Portuguese Past Perfect: Understanding the Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito
The Portuguese equivalent of the English Past Perfect is called Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito, and it’s used to express an action that happened in the past before another past action—for example, “I had met your parents before I met you.”
In Portuguese, there are two forms of the Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito: a simple form (with one verb) and a compound form (with two verbs). Surprisingly, the compound form is the one commonly used in everyday life, not the simple one. Read on.
Compound
The compound version, which is the more commonly used of the two, is structurally similar to the English Past Perfect. The auxiliary verb (have in English, ter in Portuguese) is conjugated in the past tense and followed by the main verb in its Past Participle form.
As you know, Portuguese has different “types” of past tenses (also called verb aspects), such as the Pretérito Perfeito and Pretérito Imperfeito. In the compound version of the Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito, the auxiliary verb is conjugated in the Pretérito Imperfeito. Let’s look at a couple of examples:
[Aux (P. Imperfeito) + Main (Particípio) ]
Ela já tinha estado no Brasil antes de ti.
She had already been to Brazil before you.
Eu tinha visto os Dire Straits ao vivo antes de eles serem conhecidos.
I had seen Dire Straits live before they were known.
Simple
The simple version has an erudite tone and is most commonly found in books. It’s called “simple” because it does not use an auxiliary verb:
[Main (Pretérito Mais-que Perfeito)]
A Liliana pensara muito no assunto.
Liliana had given it a lot of thought.
Ela viajara muito antes de se ter apaixonado pela China.
She had traveled a long time before she fell in love with China.
In terms of conjugation, almost all verbs are regular in the Pretérito Mais-que-Perfeito. The stem is derived from the infinitive form, and the following endings are added as the verb is conjugated:
| Pensar | Correr | |
| eu | pensara | correra |
| tu | pensaras | correras |
| vocêele, ela | pensara | correra |
| nós | pensáramos | corrêramos |
| vocêseles, elas | pensaram | correram |
A few verbs, such as ser, estar, ir, fazer, and poder (the usual suspects), are irregular. For these, the starting point is not the infinitive form but the first person singular of the Future Subjunctive, while the conjugation endings remain the same:
| Ir | Fazer | |
| eu | fora | fizera |
| tu | foras | fizeras |
| vocêele, ela | fora | fizera |
| nós | fôramos | fizéramos |
| vocêseles, elas | foram | fizeram |
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